Transformers Beast Machines: The Complete Series

Like every other show in the Transformer’s animated universe, there’s a lot of overly complicated plot layered in every episode of this cartoon series, and if you aren’t familiar with any of the shows that have come before it, you may start to feel lost soon after the opening credits start rolling. The fact that the computer generated animation isn’t that well done, either, may have you reaching for the stop button before the first commercial break. Relax. Give it a chance. While it may not be cutting edge, graphically speaking, this show is edgy enough to be entertaining. In the series, the Beast Wars are over and the Maximals (a Transformer/animal hybrid) return to their home planet of Cybertron to find the planet empty of their loved ones and patrolled by menacing Vehicon drones. (We said it was overly complicated.) What happens over the course of the next 26 episodes is, thankfully, simply a lot of fun.

The Musketeers

The advantage of telling the epic story of the Three Musketeers over the course of a series like this instead of cramming it into a two hour movie (as has been done several times before) is that it gives the storytellers time to really develop the individual characters in the tale. In fact, at times this BBC series seems to take a bit too much time developing the characters, mainly because it keeps interrupting the stories with a lot of poorly filmed swordfights, but the cumulative effect of watching the entire season is well worth it. An early standout in the cast is the performance of Peter Capaldi (the new Doctor Who) as Cardinal Richelieu, a man so involved in setting up palace intrigues that you hardly notice the French cardinal has a Scottish accent. Santiago Cabrera plays Aramis well, too, particularly once he sets his seductive eyes on the queen (Alexandra Dowling).

High School Confidential

Cool cats and hot chicks get involved with the local reefer dealer and it isn’t too long before their happy high school days end in deadly tragedy. Yes, it’s all a bit melodramatic and the lesson the story is trying to tell is passed along with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the forehead, but that’s part of what makes watching this 1958 exploitation film such a gas. Russ Tamblyn is a hoot as tough guy Tony Baker, a transfer student looking to score, and Jan Sterling is the perfect foil for him playing the part of the high school guidance councilor who thinks he can be a better man. On the less believable, but still highly enjoyable, side is the scenery chewing of Mamie Van Doren as Tony’s oversexed mom and Diane Jergens as the marijuana addict Joan. Heck, the movie even has Jerry lee Lewis on the back of a flat bed truck singing the theme song for the opening credits. It all adds up to one crazy ride.

Jackpot

Oscar Svendsen (Kyrre Hellum) is having a really bad day, starting when he wakes up beneath a dead fat hooker in a sex shop, covered in blood and holding a shotgun, surrounded by dead bodies with the police standing over him, their guns drawn, ready to arrest him. Hard to believe that just a few hours ago, he’d won a multi-million dollar jackpot in a soccer pool. Discovering just how Oscar got under the dead fat hooker in the first place is the wild ride that writer/director Magnus Martens takes the audience on in this hugely entertaining movie that blends blood and buffoonery in some new and exciting ways. The cast is all very good, especially Hellum as the man who some very bad things happen to (again and again), and Henrik Mestad as the detective trying to piece Oscar’s unbelievable, but true, story together.  

Vengeance Is Mine

Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is a thief and a killer. We know that because we see him be arrested and hear him confess at the start of the film. But this exciting story, from director Shôhei Imamura (The Pornographers) isn’t about who did it, but why. Why did Enokizu kill all those people? The answers, as Imamura presents them, are not easy to understand. The disturbing feeling you get as the story progresses that maybe he’s really just a bad man at heart is one that will haunt you long after the film ends. Imamura tells the story in a way that can hardly be termed chronological, given the way the plot jumps around from event to event, past to present and back again, but the cumulative effect of watching the story told this way builds in your mind exponentially. Thirty five years after it first shocked audiences, the film still thrills.

Deadbeat

Canadian comic actor Tyler Labine has been bumping around the edges of stardom for close to 20 years now, mainly showing up as comic relief in other people’s films and often ending up the only thing you remember from those films. So it’s nice to see him get a series of his own and the young funnyman certainly makes the most of it. In the show, Labine plays Kevin Pacalioglu, a spiritual medium who gets hire to investigate paranormal problems. The twist is that Kevin takes the cases to help the ghosts and not the people they are haunting. Sure, it gets a bit silly at times, but Labine has the comic energy to sell even the strangest tales the writers come up with. He also plays well with the others in  the cast, especially Brandon T. Jackson who plays his drug dealer, Roofie.

75 Years of WWII

Using a blend of personal accounts and archival footage, this two-disc set from the History Channel does an excellent job of taking the audience out of their comfort zone for a close, and often disturbing, look at the horrors of war. D-Day in HD takes up half the set and it’s worth it. It’s one thing to watch the invasion in a movie, even if it’s as graphic a film as Saving Private Ryan, but it’s a lot more intense to hear a survivor of the invasion talk about how the air was filled with bullets, smoke and flying body parts as he desperately runs from the ocean to the beach. The two sea battle stories -- Bloody Santa Cruz recounting the vicious combat in the South Pacific in which the USS Hornet was lost and Enterprise Versus Japan detailing the battle when the USS Enterprise sends the Japanese Imperial Navy to a watery grave – are equally intense. The final chapter, Ultimate World War II Weapons, isn’t as frenetic as the others, but just as fascinating.